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Post by swamprat on Jan 28, 2018 20:08:10 GMT -6
Challenger
January 28, 1986
Rest in Peace, Heroes
Francis R. Scobee, Commander Michael J. Smith, Pilot Ronald McNair, Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka, Mission Specialist Judith Resnik, Mission Specialist Gregory Jarvis, Payload Specialist Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist, Teacher
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Post by plutronus on Jan 29, 2018 7:59:36 GMT -6
Challenger
January 28, 1986
Rest in Peace, Heroes
Francis R. Scobee, Commander Michael J. Smith, Pilot Ronald McNair, Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka, Mission Specialist Judith Resnik, Mission Specialist Gregory Jarvis, Payload Specialist Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist, Teacher I had just met three of the STS-51L astronauts a month earlier, Mike Smith (pilot), Judy Resnick (Xerox engineer, mission specialist and Dick Scobee (commander). Myself and my business partner, we were sub-contractors, were completing the Rockwell/Rocketydyne SSME ascent turbo-pump shaft-torque sensor telemetry downlink analysis system for the NSTL Contractor Telemetry-Data System for Rocketdyne. (blah blah, all the main contractors...Rockwell, Thiokol, General-Dynamics, etc, involved with flight aspects of the STS system were provided connection nodes into the NASA Space Shuttle microwave downlink telemetry and communication network to be able to monitor their specifically supplied hardware systems.) The three astronauts flew their T38s from the Cape in Florida to visit the California facility and to eyeball our super-mini-computer system that my partner and I integrated for their up-coming flight. We were working around the clock, I often slept on the floor behind the Perkin-Elmer 3250 super-minicomputer that did the science number-crunching. One morning, my partner awakened me..."There are astronauts here, they wanna meet us!". Red and bleary eyed, half consciouse, I ran my fingers through my hair, lifted myself up off the false floor (the floor consisted of cross-hatch wire-tiles, through which one could see the mass of under-floor cables running every which way to the different systems cabinets and equipment racks we had integrated.) I tucked shirt into my waistband and stepped around the corner. Around the corner of our big mainframe computer, standing there in NASA Orange Jump-Suits were the astronauts. They were beatiful people. And let me tall you, Judy Resnick was a Babe! So, my partner and I are standing there talking with them, and it was just the five of us, my partner and them, standing inside our section of the facility amongst our telemetery system we were constructing. After the pleasantries, they began asking technical questions about the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine) turbo-pump sensor and how did the data-reduction, and the calibration methods for the data-acquisition-system....smart, informed questions. It was really refreshing. After awhile, I noticed that the astronauts would smile a bit, and then look down after looking at me. Judy Resnick, leaned near me, and whispered that perhaps I should visit the men's room. I remember thinking, "Oh my God, my fly's open!!" So I went to the restroom, and nope, thankfully it wasn't my fly!!! Nope, but it was very clear that I had been sleeping on the false floor, as my face looked as though I had slept on a waffle-iron cooking surface, hah hah hah!! Later before the astronauts went into other Rocketdyne meetings Judy Resnick gifted me her NASA space-shuttle ball-park cap, as apparently I had admired it so much. The public at that juncture had little or no access to any official NASA/Space-Shuttle memorobilia, although NASA had printed mission decals, cloth mission patches, photographs. Rocketdyne offered a company store, but entrance required an employee badge to enter the premise. So, when I saw her ball park cap, I told her that it was really kewl, and she gave it to me!!! How kewl was that? ...Its very worn now, but I still have that cap... Rocketdyne and her employees were a family who were wholly committed to the Space Shuttle. For instance, Rocketdyne being a very large rocket engine manufacturing facility on ten acres or so of land in the main area, there were four including the recently decommissioned Santa-Sussana Field Laboratory. In these facilities were dozens of male and female restrooms, each containing literally dozens of urinals and toilet stalls, lined up side by side, and as you walked down the aisle, one could see on the underside of every toilet seat were mission decals affixed and also on the sides of the urinals. Space Shuttle memoriblia was everywhere, on the walls of the hallways, photos of missions, astronauts in oribit, floating around inside the shuttle bay, on the walls of the worker cubicals....there were space shuttle things everywhere. Even for the short time that my partner and I had worked there as contractors...it was great. Then to have the astronauts come down to specifically meet with my partner and myself, to chat with us regarding the turbo-pump telemetry DAS system..man it was kewl. A couple of weeks later they were dead. It blew everyone's mind who was affiliated with the space shuttle. We were all so proud. After the accident Rocketdyne had become like a morgue. We were ashen. I had previously seen a vision of the accident three or four months prior, and as is often the case, I did not understand the vision's meaning until I saw the event unfolding. :( The accident affected me that much...the Roger Nelson 'preseponce wave'. One of my business associates, our math scientist and the fellow who wrote the water-fall analysis algorithms for the NSTL telemetry system, he and I studied the Challenger accident together. The event and our obsession to **know** what happened to them durring the disaster greatly interfered with our DoD systems contracts we were also working at the time. Using physics, math, re-watching the NBC news video of the cabin ascent (after range-safety broke up the vehicle...wing had sheared off, the 100 ton orbitor had canted back toward the Florida mainland, traveling at about 12,000 mph...envision that landing in a backyard)...a few things were revealed. We determined that the crew-cabin which seperated from the vehicle body (right at the prior escape-module break-away section, which had been removed to increase payload capacity) the cabin continued its ascent for another 3 minutes, and then the fall to the ocean was another 7 minutes. Later, via the Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine disclosure that the pilot's and co-pilot's PEEPs (PErsonal Egress Packs) had been turned on, and since those astronauts could not physically access the pack controls while strapped into their chairs, Mission Specialist Judy Resnick, via procedure, had to unbuckle, stand up, turn-on their PEEPs, and then re-buckle herself into her chair, after the orbitor broke up and during the continued ascent inertia. Then also, that the PEEPs metered air by sensing the astronaut's diaphram motion, meaning, to deplete the PEEPs reserve air-supply the astronauts had to be breathing...alive. The PEEPs maximum air volume was rated at 20 minutes. So 3 + 7 = 10 minutes, leaving 10 minutes in the ocean. The four astronauts in the crew-deck, below the flight-deck, it was revealed by AW&ST (and was the motivation for future shuttle flights requiring astronauts to wear pressure helmets during ascent), that Christa McAuliffe (Teacher) had aspirated (1 breath death) hydrazine fuel used by the RCS (Reaction Control System...vernier positioning nose jets) when the cabin cracked, and later Christa McAuliffe (Teacher), Jarvis (Hughes engineer), Onizuka and McNair mission specialists, were all decapitated by the cabin wiring-loom when the crew-deck cabin sheared-off as the crew module slammed into the ocean surface at 450 mph. The impact was so violent, congressmen who have seen the recovered Challenger shuttle components, and the instrument panel (all deposited into an abandoned missile silo), claim that the astronauts restraining straps apparently failed, and that there were two body impressions imprinted into the metal instrument panel, yet the PEEP evidence depicts that the flight-deck crew drowned, however unconscious. Still sad... plutronus
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Post by skywalker on Jan 29, 2018 19:15:55 GMT -6
Thanks for the detailed story, dude. It must be an amazing feeling to be a part of something as grand as the space shuttle program. Definitely kewl. And it is very said that a few of those missions ended in disasters. At least they died doing something they loved and they did their best to the very end. That's not a bad way to go.
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